As quickly as the sun disappeared from the sky on Aug. 21, 2017, hidden by the moon, did it reappear once again. Little did I know this cosmic event — the first time since 1918 that the continental United States has been able to witness such a moment of wonder — would also mark my move to a new job.

I recently spoke with Ralph DiNola, CEO of Portland, Oregon-based New Buildings Institute, a nonprofit working to improve the energy performance of commercial buildings, who told me about a decades-old bump in the road: federal preemption rules.

As I write this, it’s the last day of the 2017 AHR Expo in Las Vegas. While SNIPS editor Michael McConnell is making his way to company booths we may have missed, I’m already back at home in Michigan with some time to reflect on my first visit to an HVAC/sheet metal trade show.

I just finished up a story for the February issue on getting young workers — aka millennials — involved in the skilled trades and pursuing areas like HVAC construction and ductwork fabrication, so since it’s only December I have some time to think about what I learned during my research.

Yesterday I visited my first sheet metal shop and, let me just say, it was a full-on sensory experience.

In anticipation of a cover story I’ve been working on for the upcoming October issue on how women are faring in HVAC, I was curious as to just how many women SNIPS readers employ at their companies.

Let me start out by saying that before this summer, acronyms like HVAC or ASHRAE were simply groupings of familiar letters that stood for unfamiliar terms. The same goes for industry words like flat-oval duct, spiral duct — and well, a lot of variations that include the word “duct.”